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I work at a lot of startups as a contractor. The disregard for privacy and user data everywhere I go is astounding. They're all in survival mode.
by McDev 7y ago
I work at a lot of startups as a contractor. The disregard for privacy and user data everywhere I go is astounding. They're all in survival mode.
- DaiPlusPlus 7y agoMy experience with startups lately is if it’s a greenfield project that started within the past 3 years then they’ll do everything by the book: sometimes even down to storing email addresses as hashes in the database, requiring a user to login first for the software system - and the company - to know their email address). Older systems which depend on having PII and even financial information as cleartext in the database are the problem - and its essentially technical debt with far-reaching consequences, so no-one will fix a system that uses tenants’ customers’ SSNs as a primary-key (yup).
- baroffoos 7y agoI am aware of a legacy system powering a local business which runs on Rails 1 on a version of debian from 2012 and stores users passwords in plaintext, downcased. I have tried to explain so many times that this system needs to be replaced urgently not for security reasons but because no one actually knows how to use rails 1 anymore.
- dwoozle 7y agoI have a Rails 1 product making $10K a year but I don’t have even the ability to log into the box anymore so if even the tiniest thing falls over that revenue is permanently gone for me.
- baroffoos 7y agoIts funny how we let this all slide when it comes to tech. Imagine if someone said "Food safety regulations only hurt the small businesses, they don't have the resources to wash a cutting board after cutting chicken while McDonalds serves unhealthy but legally safe food"
- Mirioron 7y agoBut that's exactly what happens in the world though. In some poorer countries like China, street vendors are literally using gutter oil to make food. If you want rules to be respected then you must be able to enforce them. Poorer places just can't afford to enforce those rules. If rules aren't enforced equally then people won't follow them, because if they have additional costs that their competition doesn't then they'll likely be outcompeted.
- bjelkeman-again 7y agoBut I don’t think McDev above was talking about a software startup in the poorest part of the world. I have implemented GDPR in a small non profit open source SaaS business. A funded startup should have no issue doing the same.
- Mirioron 7y agoBut I wasn't talking about poorest parts of the world either. China is richer than some EU countries, eg Bulgaria.
- em-bee 7y agothey can and they do enforce it. street vendors are much less common in china than they used to be.
- Jommi 7y agoYes, in now richer cities. But they still thrive in lower gdp cities.
- 7y ago
- beher 7y agoDo you consider it difficult to survive as a startup while protecting the privacy of users?